Pilots which never got a series.

[Spiny Norman]

Jake's Journey has been shown in the past and they're doing it again: https://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/and-now-for-something-totally-different?fbclid=IwAR0Wc8aaCEGP1heKnyxk4J9sbEqPPWrsUaophpchrNrn9cXUtiwJ0KWeR-Q

[JaDanketies]

Heil Honey, I'm Home!

[letsgobrian]

Eugene Mirman had a sketch show pilot for Comedy Central from which he played some material at the Eugene Mirman and Pretty Good Friends show at Soho Theatre in 2011. It seemed very promising and then it never appeared. The internet tells me it was to be called Eugene!

[Bobloblawslawbomb]

I really enjoyed James Acasters pilot 'We the jury'. Shame it didn't get picked up.

[Uncle TechTip]

I really enjoyed James Acasters pilot 'We the jury'. Shame it didn't get picked up.

Was he even born when the thread was started!!!

Heil Honey had a full series in the bag I thought, just never broadcast?

[JaDanketies]

I didn't read the OP sorry and I don't regret that Heil Honey never got broadcast past the pilot

[Spiny Norman]

Was he even born when the thread was started!!!

Heil Honey had a full series in the bag I thought, just never broadcast?

Yes nine episodes were made and still exist.

It's even said that it was the channel takeover, rather than any kerfuffle from snowflakes avant la lettre, which cancelled it.

You can't even make a comedy series about hitler, bloody cancel culture! :p


But as I said before, it was a two trick pony (1. comedy hitler and 2. a fake 50s sitcom style) so how long would that stay afloat?

[QDRPHNC]

Anyone mention Heat Vision & Jack yet? A parody of the Knight Rider / Streethawk talking-vehicle genre starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson and directed by Ben Stiller.

Here's the whole thing.

[pandadeath]

There was a BBC 3 pilot called 'Delta Forever' that came out in 2008, centred around an online fan community, that I really liked. It featured some pretty well known faces, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Ophelia Lovibond, Daniel Kaluuya, Alex McQueen and Greg McHugh but BBC 3 decided not to commission a full series and instead just pissed away more of their budget on producing Coming Of Age instead.

[Tony Yeboah]

Beat The Chimp, hosted by Tim Vine for those crazy Americans.

[ajsmith2]

It got one full series, but there should have been many more series (ok I'd settle for even one more) of The High Life. Also, one of the 4 main characters was a pilot (the prophetically named Hillary Duff) so it counts tangentially on that front. Sadly Alan Cumming had to get all Hollywood successful and twas not to be :( Apparently a second series was written: even now I dream about Big Finish getting the cast back together to do an audio version.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Yes nine episodes were made and still exist.

It's even said that it was the channel takeover, rather than any kerfuffle from snowflakes avant la lettre, which cancelled it.

You can't even make a comedy series about hitler, bloody cancel culture! :p


But as I said before, it was a two trick pony (1. comedy hitler and 2. a fake 50s sitcom style) so how long would that stay afloat?

That pilot is on YouTube somewhere, and I must say, it's bloody hilarious. It's a parody of mainstream American sitcoms, just with the added shtick that Hitler's in it, being domineered by Eva and his Jewish neighbour.

[HamishMacbeth]

Over to Bill in 2014, starring Hugh Dennis, Neil Morissey, Tracy Ann Oberman, written and directed by Doug Naylor (only thing he's done outside Red Dwarf since the 90s, I think) and aired as a one-off comedy playhouse. I watched this at the time and I can't say it's going on my greatest missed opportunities list, but there was something interesting about it. It used a lot of cozy sitcom actors, very middle class, outnumbered type vibe, but seemed to be going for something a bit meaner, with a little bit of shock to it. I can't imagine it would have done anything really controversial if it had gone to series, but it did make me feel a bit sad Doug Naylor is just the keeper of Red Dwarf now. It's like that documentary about George Lucas where all his old friends talk about the big stack of scripts he used to carry around for little labour of love projects he was going to make when he was finally done with Star Wars.

Except at least with George Lucas, we're talking about Star Wars.

[Captain Z]

Adam Buxtons "MeeBox"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNm_WOIVxBU

No doubt it was probably panned on here at the time, but I was quite surprised it didn't get a full series. Especially as I seem to remember a trailer for it quite prominently repeated across BBC2/3 in the week or two before broadcast.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Adam Buxtons "MeeBox"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNm_WOIVxBU

No doubt it was probably panned on here at the time, but I was quite surprised it didn't get a full series. Especially as I seem to remember a trailer for it quite prominently repeated across BBC2/3 in the week or two before broadcast.

It went out in the BBC3 in the post-11pm Sunday Night death slot were they stuck pilots that they'd obviously already decided weren't getting a series, I remember Paul Rose's Biffovision pilot also getting dumped there (although to be fair, that wasn't very good). MeeBox definitely deserved a whole series run, at least.

Just confirmed with BBC Genome - three BBC3 showings, first was 11:45 on Sunday 22nd June 2008, then again four days later at 1:30(!) and 4:25 (!!)

[petril]

Pseudonym for Whitehouse and Higson, maybe? According to Wikipedia, they did contribute material to Naked Video, as did Rik Mayall. Easy money, I suppose, like Rikki Fulton taking in the Two Ronnies' castoffs. Your mention of cheap VHS copies of Scottish output also reminds me of every video shop in Scotland having those compilation tapes of Scotch and Wry with the lurid tartan covers.

Hmm, should we maybe have another thread for the discussion of poor Scottish comedy? All this has also brought to mind BBC Scotland's terrible All Along the Watchtower, which was used by the Daily Record as a way of having a go at Angus Deayton, who had turned down the lead role, and was then hyped as being the Scottish Dad's Army...

the decline of Only An Excuse from a really good parody of a proper football documentary, through alright specials to the phone-it-in Hogmanay routine of the last 20+ years

[Spiny Norman]

That pilot is on YouTube somewhere, and I must say, it's bloody hilarious. It's a parody of mainstream American sitcoms, just with the added shtick that Hitler's in it, being domineered by Eva and his Jewish neighbour.

Yes, but that's the part that I label as two trick pony.

[Jake Thingray]

I didn't mean to sound unfriendly, just curious as to the reference. Twiglet? Still confused.

Dead kate moss hasn't posted on here for years, sadly several other posters on this thread's first page are long absent for varying reasons, so this may be pointless after eleven years, but 'Twiglet' was a possibly self-awarded nickname for Roger Day, due to his thinness. Day left or was fired from BBC local radio some time back, I'd given up on him anyway due to his uniquely daft position of being pro-Brexit despite living in Spain, also has latterly been a Covid anti-vaxxer and thinks Laura Kuenssberg shows left-wing bias. Find myself liking Radio Wales these days.

[Mobius]

I quite liked Lizzie and Sarah

[elliszeroed]

Pistol Pete by John Swartzwelder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H2sF424S98

[Ignatius_S]

It got one full series, but there should have been many more series (ok I'd settle for even one more) of The High Life. Also, one of the 4 main characters was a pilot (the prophetically named Hillary Duff) so it counts tangentially on that front. Sadly Alan Cumming had to get all Hollywood successful and twas not to be :( Apparently a second series was written: even now I dream about Big Finish getting the cast back together to do an audio version.

Nicely played!

Forbes Masson suggested a huge problem for the show and why it didn't get a second series, was a change in management at the Beeb - prior to this, they wanted a second series even without Cumming. I think there's a link to it on his Wikipedia page that went into a little detail.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Dead kate moss hasn't posted on here for years, sadly several other posters on this thread's first page are long absent for varying reasons, so this may be pointless after eleven years, but 'Twiglet' was a possibly self-awarded nickname for Roger Day, due to his thinness.

"Roger Day, the thinner record spinner." (I heard DKM was a doctor now. He's done very well for himself.)

[cacciaguida]

https://vimeo.com/55200746#

I think this is really fun.

Tim Key, Aisling Bea and some others. Scenes range from really funny to just good entertainment and the show revolves about about dating and relationships.

Only 15 mins but the Key / Bea date is a real delight

Looks like the rest of the show has been filmed as their is a little trailer for the rest of the series at the end.

Sadly never saw the light of day

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm a bit pilot obsessed and have written reviews for a lot of them elsewhere, and am short on time now, but I'm especially fond of Unbelievables, a 1999 superhero spoof that was written and directed by Ed Solomon. It covers a fair amount of ground that The Incredibles did, albeit five years prior, and is notable for Steve Carell in a fairly early role as Tim Curry's villainous sidekick. A couple of aspects haven't aged well, but in general I like it a lot and it's a definite shame it didn't get a series. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6z7gul

[HamishMacbeth]

I'm still fascinated by Justice League of America which tries to adapt DC superheroes as a roommates sitcom with a chunky David Ogden Stiers as the Martian Manhunter. Memorable because A) it's terrible, and B) even though it aired on a few different stations, the copy that seems to have survived is from very early Channel 5 when they stuck a massive 5 in the corner and had bright yellow and pink lettering for everything, so it's a weird fusion of crap obscure American junk from the 90s and crap obscure British junk from the 90s.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x3f1s

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm still fascinated by Justice League of America which tries to adapt DC superheroes as a roommates sitcom with a chunky David Ogden Stiers as the Martian Manhunter. Memorable because A) it's terrible, and B) even though it aired on a few different stations, the copy that seems to have survived is from very early Channel 5 when they stuck a massive 5 in the corner and had bright yellow and pink lettering for everything, so it's a weird fusion of crap obscure American junk from the 90s and crap obscure British junk from the 90s.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x3f1s

I'm looking forward to watching that later on today. The main Justice League title did become a humour comic back in the eighties pretty successfully for about 40 or so issues when Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis were writing it, it ran out of steam eventually and so returned to being a serious affair, but I'll be interested to see if they used any of the ideas or gags from that run.

[HamishMacbeth]

I'm looking forward to watching that later on today. The main Justice League title did become a humour comic back in the eighties pretty successfully for about 40 or so issues when Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis were writing it, it ran out of steam eventually and so returned to being a serious affair, but I'll be interested to see if they used any of the ideas or gags from that run.

I'm not familiar with that period in the comics myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was someone with a genuine affection for comics and the JLA at some point in the process. It has the feeling of a show that might have actually been quite good on paper, but lost too much of itself to 90s ideas of what an action comedy TV series is. Could have been an early Buffy or The Office with Superheroes, but ended up Robocop: The Series.

[g0m]

Dayworld, on Adult Swim. still annoyed about this

[Mark X]

the decline of Only An Excuse from a really good parody of a proper football documentary, through alright specials to the phone-it-in Hogmanay routine of the last 20+ years

In 1996, it seems the Beeb tried to widen the appeal of Only An Excuse by adding Alistair McGowan to the mix and giving it an airing on network BBC2: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0026a1b652cd4688ad26e80e6bee88e5

It went out at 11.50pm on a Friday, just after the pilot of Simon Munnery's London Shouting (a pilot definitely worthy of a mention here). Not a promising slot nowadays, but that was the time when Fantasy Football League became a national talking point despite being in a similar post-11pm slot.

[lb99]

https://vimeo.com/55200746#

I think this is really fun.

Tim Key, Aisling Bea and some others. Scenes range from really funny to just good entertainment and the show revolves about about dating and relationships.

Only 15 mins but the Key / Bea date is a real delight

Looks like the rest of the show has been filmed as their is a little trailer for the rest of the series at the end.

I also really liked this. They didn't shoot the rest of the show, they only shot those scenes and presented them as a trailer to give an idea to commissioners of where the series could go.